Natural 'Hoods
I wrote before about green neighborhoods, and today TreeHugger has a post about an article in Natural Home Magazine that rates America's top 10 Eco-Neighborhoods. No. 1 is the West Asheville Neighborhood in Asheville NC, followed by the South Congress Neighborhood in Austin TX. A newbie in the eco-world is Indiana's own Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis, ranked No. 7. I'll have to take a drive through next time I go down to wrangle with the regulators.
2 comments:
Dear T.I.S. (Treehugging Industrial Suburbanite),
Your blogsite is certainly valuable. While some of the costs of living “green” are coming down, many of the “greenest” products are still too expensive for the average wage-earner to afford. You have covered some of these cost concerns in your many articles.
One of the ecologically brutal realities of suburban life is that many/most homeowners want to have a green – or greenish – lawn. The flower gardeners want healthy blossoms, and the vegetable gardeners obviously want good yields. In almost every soil in the land there are not enough nutrients to have a rewarding yield without some outside support. We call it fertilizer. While we may someday convince suburbanites that the greenest lawn does not mean the homeowner is the finest person, and that lawn care products are among the worst things we are doing to our land, it will be a helluva long time before we get gardeners to stop enhancing their plants’ growth, for good reason.
Further, we cannot assume that Joe or Mary Suburbanite are going to have the time or interest or public conscience to sit around creating organic mixes out of their own trash in great and regular quantities.
Today Joe and Mary are out at Wal-Mart on Saturday morning buying Scotts or similar lawn and garden products and casting them generously about before the ballgame comes on. They like those big numbers on the side, such as 27-7-3, not knowing that the bigger the number, the worse things they are doing to the watershed, and to their children’s world.
I am here to offer one small solution. It doesn’t stop the envrio-bleeding but it may help. It is cheap and I’ve used it and it works on lawns and gardens. And its been around for 80 years. No, I am not being paid by the Milorganite company. I used it years ago and then forgot it, but was reacquainted with it last year by an old man who grows tons of beautiful vegetables. Milorganite is an organic microbic fertilizer made by the Milwaukee Sewerage District. It comes in 40 lb bags for only about $9.00. I use it regularly with very good results. It is sold at many stores, including some of the big box garden centers. Its “numbers” are 6-2-0 and it has 4% iron. It does not “burn” plants or leaves, is basically safe for children, pets and birds, and uses the slow-release nitrogen. You can apply it anywhere anytime at almost any strength. You can read all about it at their website: www.milorganite.com
I am not a chemist and I’m sure there are a few things in it that are not environmentally perfect, but it sure beats those big brand (Scotts, et al) earth killers that we usually buy. Obviously you can tell by the name of its company that it is basically, uh, human crap. The Milwaukee Sewage company uses giant ovens to bake the bad stuff out and then they do other stuff to it. The website has the Material Safety Data Sheets for Milorganite, along with lots of other info. They claim it meets and exceeds the US EPA’s 400CFR Part 503 lower levels for heavy metals and pathogens. It has been called an “exceptional quality” biosolid. If you watch the little information video that is on their website, you may note that they do add some ‘polymers” to make it workable and cleanable. I don’t know what those are or if they have any danger. But at nine bucks for a big bag, and with such good environmental grades (at least relatively) I recommend this stuff. At least until you are ready to develop long recipes for the really safe stuff like sheep dung , yak urine fish entrails and soymilk.
George Wylie 1/6/07
Thanks for the tip. I too do not know the entire process of Milorganite's production and what types of additives are in there. BUT, even if there are a few "bad" additives, I'm confident that it is far better for our children, pets, and watersheds than any of the petroleum based products.
As spring approaches and I ready to start my first full season of organic lawn care at this home, you can be sure to find plenty of posts about it.
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